I have a Sony RDR-GX350 DVD recorder/player and it has an HDMI connector fitted but it cannot play HD DVD's so what is the point of the HDMI connector?
The Sony is connected to a Samsung LE32R51D HD ready tv
RESOLUTION 1366(H) X 768(V)
I currently use the Component Video o/p from the DVD player to the TV.
Can I expect to see any improvement in picture quality if I use an HDMI link whilst playing a non HD video?
Brings me back again to my first question-what is the point of a HDMI connector on a non HD machine?

It's a selling point.

You might see a *tiny* improvement in picture quality over the likes of SCART. Not likely to see any improvement over component.

There isn't really a great deal of point to it.

your sony can upscale... this is a process that mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV, which is typically 1280x720 (720p) or 1920x1080 (1080p).

you would typically use an HDMI cable to get these resolutions...

... and in the vast majority of cases, you'll gain nothing.

Pretty much all HD TV's have their own upscaler. Unless the one in your TV is seriously rubbish, it won't look any different than it would if played on a standard DVD player via RGB SCART. (And having tried it myself, I can confirm that thats true)

True - main advantage is it frees up a SCART socket for something else.


All HDTV's do, otherwise the picture wouldn't fill the screen.


I can confirm it dozens of times over

But where it can help, is if your TV has a really poor scaler, in that case the scaler in the DVD player will give a better picture, and for a really bad scaler, it might be a lot better.

HDMI is very much worthwhile. You should notice better picture quality. HDMI transmits video in digital form without the need for analogue conversion. Even the most superior analogue form (Component) involves the digital signal being read off the DVD (or hard drive) which then must be converted to analogue before being transmitted via the wires.

Analogue signals are more prone to variation and degradation. If this unnecessary conversion can be avoided and the native digital signal transmitted straight to your TV, then the signal will have much less chance of being degraded. So this is not a gimmick as has been suggested. Try it for yourself.

Yes but this D/A and A/D conversion adds very little in the way of noise if done properly. The noise level introduced is lower than the discrete levels of the digital signal so you're really talking about a one bit error max - in most cases it is very difficult to tell if a signal has gone through this process.

Sorry, it makes no difference whatsoever on a decent TV - it's just a sales gimmick - and gives the impression that it provides HD from your old DVD's.

As always. try it yourself - that's what options are for.

Cobblers, you will never get a better picture than the original material. HDMI cannot produce detail that isn't in the original recording

Any half decent SCART lead will keep out interference effectively. If yours are leaking, get new ones!

Yes it is a gimmick. The problem is as follows;
1 Your DVD plays 576 lines by 720 pixels of video
2 It upscales this to 720 lines by 1366 pixels, which means it has to make approximations as 720 is not a tidy multiple of 576, and 1280 is not a tidy multiple of 720
3 Your TV takes this, and mashes it out to 768 lines by 1366 pixels, again it makes aproximations as 768 is not a tidy multiple of 720, neither is 1366 a tidy multiple of 1280
4 The upshot of all that can be quite serious blurring, particularly of sharp edges, and even herringbone patterning reminiscent of check shirts on 1970s PAL.

The alternative is to let your TV have the DVD's native 576 by 720 picture and sort it out itself. The conversion ratios here are tidy, so the conversion is simple and few approximations have to be made. In addition, the TV manufacturers are taking a lot of trouble over their scalers, but the cheap DVD manufacturers (i.e. most of them) just use whatever is cheapest.
Last edited by duanedibley : 05-12-2008 at 10:39

Just out of idle curiosity I had a look through the TVs on sale on the Comet website, just to compare different makes and models.

Assuming Comet are not lying about the specs it was interesting to see that apart from a Goodmans set, most 22in and above had at least equal numbers of SCART and HDMI sockets. And I would say most had more HDMI than SCART. Most common combination seemed to be 3 HDMI and 2 SCART.

So looks like HDMI may be turning into the new SCART. Wonder how long it will be before the first TV appears with NO SCART sockets, just HDMI.

Probably a long time yet. There's still a lot of kit out there that doesn't have HDMI output. DVD players, DVD recorders, satellite boxes, Freeview boxes, cable boxes, VCRs etc etc etc.

I agree it will be quite a long time. The number of SCARTS may go down though especially since SCART can be easily daisy chained (and it's better to do this in most cases) whereas HDMI is one input for each device.

HDMI switches will continue to fall in price and raise in reliability though so the number of inputs on the TV will not be so important.

I agree mostly with what you are saying (I don't use upscaling on my DVD player or Sky+HD) but this is not always the case.

My Panny TV (1366x768) always upscales to 1920x1080 for processing so the route is not so tortuous as you describe.

Using upscaling to 1080p my BD player will for films upscale from 576p to 1080p just like my TV so there is no difference it is a straight comparison as to which does the upscaling better. Compared to my DVD recorder the TV is better but compared to the BD player the BD player upscales better.

If on the other hand I was to use 576i output from the player then interlacing/deinterlacing comes into the equation and that can cause picture degredation.

The result is I use 576p for Sky+HD (SD, no i available) and also for my DVD recorder but for playing DVDs on my BD I use 1080p upscaling. The upscaling on my Sony BDP-S350 is excellent and does improve the picture.

I don't think some posters read my post in the right way and apologies if it was confusing. HDMI will produce a better picture than the same signal if it were transmitted via SCART due to the lack of conversion that would be necessary.

I was not referring to any form of upscaling or any form of HD content. If I had the option of connecting my device by SCART or HDMI, I would always choose HDMI. I have tried both component, RGB SCART and HDMI all from Denon 1904 DVD player. The HDMI connection won hands down and the component looked a little softer. I realise this may be peculiar to just my kit.

HDMI does not always mean automatic upscaling which some posters thought I was referring to, and I agree that sometimes the TV does a better job when it comes to scaling. My comment was referring to HDMI as just an alternative way of transmitting video compared to say SCART or component.

The original post asked if it was a waste of time. My option of choosing it over the other methods definitely gives me a better picture.

To call it a gimmick seems to be missing the point about keeping the digital signal untouched for as much as possible. If HDMI was unnecessary and inferior, why is it used so much to transmit all the new high definition video formats?

You say 'will' based on experience with one expensive DVD player - I would say 'may' based on experience of a great many, but mostly you can't tell the slightest difference - and fairly often RGB SCART is actually 'better'.

But the option is there, try both, and decide which you personally prefer.


Solely because it can be compressed to give much inferior quailty, and so it can fit in the available bandwidth - transmitting it as analogue of some kind (without using limiting encoding like PAL) would give far superior pictures to compressed digital.

However, reverting to one or two channels in total probably wouldn't go down well

Digital TV isn't about quality, it's about cheapness and multi-channels - the best quality SD transmissions ever in the UK were from the long defunct BSB, using RGB cameras and time multiplexed colour encoding (avoiding all the problems of PAL/NTSC/SECAM).